


a week in the life of apartment 11a

by chameleontattoos



Category: Pentagon (Korean Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-08 23:51:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12264597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chameleontattoos/pseuds/chameleontattoos
Summary: a look through the peephole of existence(Changgu squawks in surprise, clapping a hand to his eye.There’s a beat of silence before Yan An bursts out laughing. “You should see your face.” He giggles.Changgu pouts until the hilarity of the situation catches up to him. “My eye hurts.” He grins.)





	a week in the life of apartment 11a

Monday afternoons mean peace. The two inhabitants of apartment 11a have no classes on Monday afternoons, devoting their time to studying.

Changgu wanders into Yan An’s room, several pieces of paper and a can of Sprite in hand. “Have you finished the sheet for world econ yet?”

Yan An finishes the sentence he’s writing and spins around on his desk chair. “Nope.”

He’s chewing on a purple pen. Changgu would warn him about making it explode, but it would be hilarious if it did, so he doesn’t. It’s Monday afternoon; the usual rules of courtesy do not apply.

“Oh, good.” Changgu slides his socked feet over the floor and plops onto Yan An’s bed. His Sprite fizzes slightly, but doesn’t spill. “We can help each other.”

Yan An just hums, taking the opportunity to search the tiny cracks in his ceiling for some of the answers to the questions on his tute sheet.

Changgu clicks his pen a few times while he finds his place in the reading.

“Will you _stop?_ ” Yan An complains, throwing a pencil grip at him. It ricochets off the top of Changgu’s pen and hits him in the face. Startled, Changgu _drops_ his pen mid-click; it hits his paper and, with the little inertia stored in its spring, bounces back up and clocks him square in the eyeball.

Changgu squawks in surprise, clapping a hand to his eye.

There’s a beat of silence before Yan An bursts out laughing. “You should see your face.” He giggles.

Changgu pouts until the hilarity of the situation catches up to him. “My eye hurts.” He grins.

 

Tuesday, they have a graded in-class quiz (it’s not for world econ). Afterwards, they get food with Yan An’s old roommate, Yuto. They reminisce about the good old days of first year, when their quizzes were all online and they could cheat and treat them like they were open-book even though they technically weren’t.

What the lecturers didn’t (and couldn’t) know wouldn’t hurt them. Or their marks.

Yuto complains for a good while about how the sushi available at the cafeteria is nowhere near as good as the sushi his mother makes.

“They don’t do the rice right,” he gripes. “I mean, look at this. This is a disgrace.” He holds up his teriyaki chicken roll. They all watch sombrely as a few grains of rice slip out the bottom and land on his napkin. “Rice in sushi isn’t supposed to _do_ that.”

Yan An gives him a pointed look. “At least _your_ mother is only a domestic plane ride away.”

Yuto grimaces. “Yeah, I know. Sorry.”

Yan An, being an international student, has had very few opportunities to go home and visit with his family since he started university. High school, even. He was a boarder. He went home for Chinese New Year, like he does every year, but that’s been it. It’s hard when he gets homesick.

 

Wednesday is trivia night on campus. There’s alcohol. Changgu gets very drunk. Hongseok, their old RA, helps Yan An lug him back to their apartment.

Hongseok doesn’t have anywhere to be right away – he helped with setting up the hall for trivia night, which means he gets out of packing up. They chat for a while after they get Changgu into bed.

“How’s Jinho?”

“Ah, you know.” Hongseok’s mouth twists. “Too busy.”

Jinho is a fourth year. He’s the kind of good Samaritan who has his fingers in absolutely every possible pie. Doesn’t leave much time for much _free_ time.

Their extended friend group actually doesn’t see much of either of them when Jinho does have free time, because they choose to spend most of it just the two of them together. They’ve fielded more than their fair share of lewd comments about what they get up to in their ‘alone time’.

“That’s too bad.” Yan An says sympathetically. Hongseok just shrugs.

They spend the next hour or so talking about just about everything besides the fact that Changgu had tried to kiss Yan An, and what it means. What would be the point? He won’t remember. He has a good drunk memory, but even Drunk Changgu’s ability to recall events gets foggy when he reaches _this_ level of drunk.

 

Thursday brings their hamsters’ quarterly check-up at the veterinarian. It’s a collaborative effort to pull together every single piece of paperwork they could possibly need. It’s also collaboratively decided that they really need a proper filing system for all these certificates and forms and old receipts.

They stop off at the pet supply shop on the way home, having decided to replace a few of the furnishings in the hamster cage. They walk out with another hamster, which is entirely Changgu’s doing.

Changgu, by the way, is miraculously not as hungover as one might expect. He doesn’t escape entirely, but the worst of the nausea passes a touch before noon. The group chat chalks it up to the amount of water Yan An had siphoned into him over the course of trivia night. Yuto calls him Yan Dad. Yan An protests, but then Hyunggu changes his display name and it’s all over. That’s going to be his identifier for the next two weeks. Maybe one, if he’s extremely fortunate. He’s not feeling too optimistic on that count.

All of them – minus Changgu, for obvious reasons – are individually sworn to secrecy regarding what happened last night. It wasn’t a big deal, and eventually it’ll be forgotten about. As long as Changgu doesn’t find out. If he does, he’ll get all guilty, and the whole thing will be drawn out for weeks. Hence the swearing to secrecy.

 

Friday night is movie night. Hongseok provides the projector, and Changgu sets up the screen.

They all put in to be able to afford the mini-budget-cinema equipment. The projector lives at Jinho’s place, because he’s the only one who can be trusted to keep electronics in pristine condition. Naturally, Hongseok has a, or rather _the_ spare key to Jinho’s flat. Hyojong would be the other choice, but he’s on probation because he spilt enough orange juice on one of his producing doodads to make it need a proper pull-apart and repair and nobody yet trusts him to have his shit together enough to take care of something of such collective significance.

The rollup screen stays at Yan An and Changgu’s because their living room is the biggest, with the most room for everyone’s BYO beanbag chairs, and also has the most comfortable third-hand couch. They drew lots for the couch yesterday. Yan An and Hyunggu won.

Wooseok tries to convince Hyunggu to give his much-coveted spot up for Changgu, because he’s the biggest little shit in the world, pun intended.

“The homeowners should get the best seats,” he insists. “It’s their couch.”

Changgu shakes his head. “Hyunggu won it fair and square,” he says, “And besides, who are humans without pre-set rules? Without rules society would fall into chaos and ruin.”

“You’re an idiot.” Yan An laughs, shaking his head fondly.

“Thank you.” Changgu grins. He plops into a spare beanbag. “So, what’s on the film reel tonight?”

They watch _UP_ , because it’s been a while since the last time. Wooseok does voiceovers for Kevin. Yuto almost wets himself laughing.

 

Saturday is Hamster House Cleaning Day. They still have the new hamster separated from the other two, because they’re not sure yet if they’ll all get along.

All of the removable parts get a thorough wash in the kitchen sink with soap. The draining board ends up looking like a tiny village made of brightly coloured semi-transparent plastic houses. The exercise wheels look strange laying on their sides, like sad plastic doughnuts, bereft of purpose.

 

Sunday is uneventful. The only special thing that happens on Sundays is the early night they both have in order to prepare for their early Monday classes. They don’t really do much except a lot of leisure reading and binge-watching of Friends, and call it a night at 9:30. Grandpa’s bedtime, in Hyojong’s words.

Changgu lies awake for a little while, staring at the poster taped to the ceiling above his bed. He wonders why nothing’s been said about Wednesday night. Yan An probably thinks he forgot. To be fair, he’d been toeing the line between Drunk Changgu Who Remembers and Drunk Changgu Who Doesn’t Know How He Got To This Room So He Must Have Teleported very, _very_ closely. He might have imagined the whole incident. It’s possible, given the fact that his memories of that part of the night are overlaid with a very thick, drunken fog.

But then, it’s also possible that he hadn’t.

Hm.

Putting the brakes on that train of thought, he pulls his covers up to his chin and wiggles around until he’s comfortable. A little voice in his head tells him that if he _had_ imagined it, he needs to think about why. And if he hadn’t, he needs to think about that why too. And that the whys for either possibility are probably the same.

He tells it to shush.

**Author's Note:**

> this has been in the works since whatever the 5th month is. june? no wait may. i don't know months please help me  
> i feel like it should be longer for how long it took me but oh well  
> also it has a different sort of feel to what i usually write. i would really appreciate some comments on whether or not it worked!!


End file.
